"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... terrifying result, for with a startled cry the undersized cow-man leaped as if touched by a living flame. Like a flash of light he whirled and poised on his toes, his long, evil-looking revolver drawn and cocked, his tense face vulturelike and fierce. His eyes glared through his spectacles, his livid features worked as if at the sound of his own death-call. His whole frame was tense; a galvanic current had transformed him. His weapon darted toward the spot whence the noise ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... Elmore, who had with difficulty realized the rapid change of tense. "I thought you said you ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... now a free, and, in some tense, a confidential dialogue. Her manner towards me had entirely changed; for, while it maintained the modesty and retenue of her sex and station, it displayed much of that frankness which was the natural consequence of her great intimacy at the Nest, and; as ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... readily the following principles of method: First, use the past tense in telling a story except in direct quotation. The rules of grammar require this, and it is an aid to clearness and effectiveness. For example, do not say, "So he goes" or "Then he says"; but say, "So he went" or "Then he said" (or, for variety, replied, growled, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... and less violently. Silent and wondering he lay very still, conscious that by some subtle power she was exorcising the demons of pain. His hurried breathing became regular; his hands unclinched; his form, which had been tense and rigid, relaxed into a position of comfort. He felt that he was under some beneficent spell, and for an hour scarcely moved lest he should break it and his torment return. Annie was equally silent, but with a smile saw the effects of ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... young beginners may as well commence With quiet cruising o'er the ocean, Woman; While those who are not beginners should have sense Enough to make for port, ere Time shall summon With his grey signal-flag; and the past tense, The dreary Fuimus of all things human, Must be declined, while Life's thin thread's spun out Between the gaping heir and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... present tense, and the term "executive" can describe only the then actual President. Consequently, it designates General Washington as expressly as if he had ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... sprung to their feet. It seemed from Power's attitude as though murder might be done. Philip, however, stood his ground almost contemptuously, his frame tense and poised, his fists clenched. Suddenly the strain passed. The man whose face for a moment had been almost black with passion, lowered his cane, swayed a little upon his feet, ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... war, which immediately and infallibly makes them forget everything, even their most cherished and hardwon public liberties and private interests, in the irresistible surge of their pugnacity and the tense pre-occupation of ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... With tense expectation, I put my ear close to the psychic's lips and listened breathlessly. The horn soared into the air and was drummed there, as if to show that it was out of the reach of the psychic, but ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... went on again. They seemed to John like the wild phantasmagoria of some visionary hell. Their silent, mechanical movements, their red eyelids, their broad white faces, utterly devoid of intellect or expression, terrified him. He could not avoid the tense, shocked accent with which he called ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... candidates after election are to purge themselves. Again, quae erant omnibus sortita is very difficult. Cicero nowhere else, I believe, uses the passive sortitus. But, passing that, what are the consilia meant? The tense and mood shew, I think, that the words are explanatory by the writer, not part of the decree. I venture, contrary to all editors, to take omnibus as dative, and to suppose that the consilia meant are those of the album iudicum who had been selected to try cases of ambitus, of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... a pregnant silence. Terror came into Lucia's heart. Her brain reeled. She had seen Morgan in a temper before—many times; but never with quite this sinister light in his eyes, this tense, quiet force behind his slightest gesture. What was he going to say to her? She felt like an animal at bay. She determined that she would gain one advantage by making him be the first to speak. But as he approached her slowly, fear seized her. He seemed no longer a man, just a hulking giant—a ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... the candidate who would lift us from our shame. The fervour of the house rose higher and higher. Martial music stirred our blood, and made us feel that reform and patriotism were one. The atmosphere grew tense with expectancy, when suddenly there came a great shout, and the sound of cheering from the crowd in the streets, the crowd which could not force its way into the huge and closely packed opera house. Now ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... uncertain On a thousand-year long race, But the bellying of the curtain Kept me always in one place; While the tumult rose and maddened To the roar of Earth on fire, Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened To a whisper tense as wire. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... reader must indulge me in a long parenthesis. I beg him to bear me witness that I never made one before. This parenthesis is on the tense that I am obliged to use in sending to the press these minutes. The reader observes that the last transactions mentioned happen in April and May, 1871. Those to be narrated are the sequence of those already told. Speaking of them in 1870 with the coarse tenses of the English language is very ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... out of a cloud, and shows me a white face above my own, drawn tense with emotion. "It ees all settle, ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... There was a tense pause. The two at the center of the room were gazing straight at each other; and it seemed to Johnnie, wavering weakly against the table, that he would ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... corrected the tense. "There WERE ways—plenty of them! I didn't suppose you needed to have them pointed out. But don't deceive yourself—he's thoroughly frightened. He has run straight home to his mother, and ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... sea-fog clothed the night with clinging darkness; the faded leaves hung slack and motionless from the trees, waiting for their fall; the tense notes of the surf beyond the sand-dunes vibrated through the damp air like chords from some mighty VIOLONO; large, warm drops wept from the arbour while I sat in the garden, holding the poor little book, and thinking of the white blot in the record of a life that ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... There was tense silence, and then a shout, as Martin took his wife's hand that wore the wedding ring and laid it on mine; then he and father fairly hugged each other, for father did not forget those long-ago days of the strawberries that ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... thought, the bounds of prose, did much to refer her to the realm of fantasy, some fairy-land forlorn; an effect the more marked as the wrapper she appeared hastily to have caught up, and which was somehow both voluminous and tense (flowing like a cataract in some places, yet in others exposing, or at least denning, the ample bed of the stream) reminded me of the big cloth spread in a room when any mess is to be made. She apologized when I said I had come to inquire for ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... Thundercloud. Well he knew that chief's prowess in the field. He ran his eyes over the silent, watching Hurons, and then back to the sombre face of their leader. Thundercloud sat rigid upon his stallion; his head held high; every muscle tense and strong for instant action. He was ready and eager for the fray. He, and every one of his warriors, would fight like a thousand tigers for their Princess—the pride of the proud race of Wyandots. Cornplanter saw this and he felt that on the eve of important marches ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... closer pressed the tense mob about the party. These courteous and gentle Japanese had suddenly been transformed ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... back pointedly upon the other. Broken threads of conversation were picked up by the group around them, shouts of laughter came from the group surrounding Pom-pom, who was reciting a funny poem, and the tense moment passed. ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... childishness—all soft and lovely curves. He could see her great, dark eyes. He looked for the happy love light that would follow recognition; but it did not come. Instead, terror, stark, paralyzing terror, was mirrored in her eyes, in the expression of her mouth, in the tense, cowering attitude of her body. A grim smile curved the thin, cruel lip of the Arab. The child essayed to crawl away; but before she could get out of his reach the old man kicked her brutally, sending her sprawling upon the grass. Then he followed her up to seize ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... looked down at her son. The child lay for a moment, wide-eyed and tense. Then some indescribable quality seemed to make him momentarily too large, too tall, for the narrow ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... tactful publisher. "Think not, my dear friend," replied Borrow, "that I am idle. I am finishing up the concluding part. I should be sorry to hurry the work towards the last. I dare say it will be ready by the middle of February." The correspondence grew more and more tense. Mrs Borrow wrote to the printer urging him to send to her husband, who has been overworked to the point of complaint, "one of your kind encouraging notes." Later Borrow went to Yarmouth, where sea-bathing produced a good effect upon his health; ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... inevitably have happened, and covered her face with both hands. Her cheeks burned; she knew emotion such as not once had Waldron's kiss ever been able to arouse in her. The memory of how she, half-unconscious, had lain in that stranger's arms, so powerful and tense; had been carried by him, as though she had been a child; had felt his breath upon her face and the quick, vigorous beating of his heart—all this, and more, dwelt in her soul, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... absolute, unknowing slumber. There was coming to him a sharpness of perception which affected the quiescence of his enjoyment. He rose to a sitting posture and looked about him. At once his eyes flashed, every nerve and muscle became tense and the blood leaped turbulently in his veins. He had seen that for which he had come into this region, the girl who had so reached his rude, careless heart. Lightfoot ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... the credentials had been proved satisfactory, the Master rapped for order. Silence fell. The men settled down to listen, in tense expectancy. Some took chairs, others occupied the divan, still others—for whom there were no seats—stood ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... him close in her angular, tense little arms and held him there tightly. "Everything will be all right," she repeated soothingly; "now you just put your head here, and have ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... cheeks, cautious, superficial respiration with a low, hushed voice; he complained of continuous, also occasionally of marked tearing and contracting pains in the entire abdomen, most severe upon the right side low down; the temperature was 103.2 degree F., the pulse was 112, full, somewhat tense, regular and even. ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... mean?" demanded Bob in a tense voice. "Name somebody. I suppose the fact that Germany has murdered a lot of Americans has nothing to do ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... and all eyes watched Scipio's movements as he turned Jamie over, and, supporting his dripping body in the crook of his arm, plied the flannel upon the boy's back. The moment was a tense one. Then a sigh of relief went up as the child dropped back in ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... comprends pas," but "mo pas connais"; similarly for "I am going away," he does not say, "je m'en vais," but "ma pe couri"; while for "I have a horse," instead of "j'ai un cheval," he will put the statement, "me ganye choue." It is a dialect lacking mood, tense, and grammar. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... calm and unperturbed; inwardly, tense and unstrung. She wondered if, at last, the sorrow had been healed enough for speech. Upstairs there was a room that was always locked. No one but Aunt Francesca ever entered it, and she but rarely. Once or twice, Rose had chanced to see her coming ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... Instinctively Kid Wolf knew that he was looking at the dread scourge of the Llano Estacado—The Terror of the Staked Plains! The bandit, then, kept himself masked even in front of his own men! Kid Wolf, as he listened, grew tense. His eyes were shining with snapping blue fire. The Terror was planning a raid upon the wagon train! His voice, cold and deadly, came ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... Laura resumed, with the complacency of one who saw a goodly portion of the festival she was enjoying still before her. "I was going to say, Mr. Pericles had poor Mr. Pole in his power; has him, would be the correcter tense. And Wilfrid, as you may have heard, had really grossly insulted him, even to the extent of maltreating him—a poor foreigner—rich foreigner, if you like! but not capable of standing against a strong young man in wrath. However, now there can be little ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at this point that there occurred one of those little incidents so dear to the comic draughtsman, but less popular with "us." A moaning howl, a rushing hissing sound, a moment of tense and awful silence, a devastating crash, and the E.G.A. officers' bath-house, "erected at enormous trouble and expense" by a handful of T.U. men and myself the day before, soared heavenwards with an acre or two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... race. The excitement grew tense and painful. Even Roldan felt it finally, and forgot the priest. The big bronze had quite dropped out of it and was lagging homeward, hardly greeted by a hiss. The others were almost neck and neck, the little bronze slightly in the lead. ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... and supplying all the crockery, cutlery and glass. The kitchen was a rough shed close to the cool and shaded spring of pure, clear water. Being myself but a guest, I have not the privilege of extending an invitation to the reader; so, by his leave, we will drop the present tense and I will assume the part of raconteur. How vividly do the scenes of that day come back through the highways of memory, crowded as they are with experiences of more than twenty varied years! As I rode up ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... rose—with eyeballs tense, And swollen frontal veins: To all his powers of eloquence He gave ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... scene of Hamlet is no mean test of a translator's ability—this quick, tense scene, one of the finest in dramatic literature. Foersom did it with conspicuous success. Blom has reduced it to the ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... hunted animal in their soft, luminous depths. Once they rested upon mine—I was seated in the corner facing her—and it seemed to me that there was appeal—desperate, frenzied appeal—in that long, tense look which thrilled all my pulses with passionate sympathy. Yet she held herself all the while stiff and erect. There was a certain sustaining pride in her close, firm-set mouth. There was never any sign of tears, though ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was musk-ox country, and we scanned it carefully, but saw none of the animals. Some miles down the bay we came upon the tracks of a couple of deer. A little farther on we were electrified by a tense whisper from the ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... last, I went forward to the little rise where, beside a white stake, I was to shoot. I adjusted my sling and lay down to the left of the stake; to the right was Lucy, tense and pale. My coach was a stranger; his was good Clay. My coach tried in vain to get me to take the position he preferred; it hurt and strained me, and he gave up. As I slowly got the position I was used to, working my elbows into the sand, bracing my toes, keeping my body close to ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... room above—" I looked up at the closed shutters, scarcely seeing them for the blinding rush of tears; yet stared steadily till my eyes were dry and hot again, and my choked and tense throat relaxed. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... who walk with difficulty from one room to another, who toil indoors and carry bundles of paper. Manly strength, you say, appears only with manhood; the vital spirits, distilled in their proper vessels and spreading through the whole body, can alone make the muscles firm, sensitive, tense, and springy, can alone cause real strength. This is the philosophy of the study; I appeal to that of experience. In the country districts, I see big lads hoeing, digging, guiding the plough, filling the wine-cask, driving the cart, like their fathers; you would take them for grown men if ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... would marshal his flock and drive it homeward to the milking-yard. Here he was met by the fair young Katrina Buttersprecht, the daughter of his employer, who relieved the tense udders of their daily secretion. One evening after the milking, Deidrick, who had for years been nourishing a secret passion for Katrina, was smitten with an idea. Why should she not be his wife? He went and fetched a stool into the yard, led her tenderly ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... tragedies had come into their little world, Cummins' people were speechless in their grief and their waiting for the final word. And when the word came to them at last, and passed from lip to lip, and from one grim, tense face to another, the doors closed again, and the lights went out one by one, until there remained only the yellow eye of the factor's office and the faint glow from the little cabin in which ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... happened, dear," she said. "I'm going to tell you what." She paused—and in the pause felt his body grow tense in a familiar way. For a moment the prospect frightened her. She felt, vaguely, that she was playing with that which was infinitely delicate—which might break in her very hands, and leave her desolate. "You know, dear," she continued, faltering, "we used to be very rich. But we're not, any more." ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... Miss Annabel's voice broke upon the tense moment with cheerful insistence, and Miss Annabel herself appeared at the turn of the walk, waving a slip of paper. She saw ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... don't think I'll croak you," and he slipped the revolver into his pocket while Spike watched him in sudden tense eagerness. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... in those words, thou hast been! when the sense of them becomes absolutely clear to us. One feels one's self sinking gradually into one's grave, and the past tense sounds the knell of our illusions as to ourselves. What is past is past: gray hairs will never become black curls again; the forces, the gifts, the attractions of youth, have vanished with ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... guard, prepared to defend himself even against actual violence. For he knew what angry women were and of what they were capable even against a Burgomaster. But after a tense pause of suspense, during every moment of which he expected her to fall upon him, she said ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... by Jessie Braham White followed closely the original tale. The entire music was composed by Edmond Rickett, who wrote melodies for a number of London Christmas pantomimes. The scenery, by Maxfield Parrish, was composed of six stage pictures, simple, harmonious, and beautiful, with tense blue skies, a dim suggestion of the forest, and the quaint architecture of the House of the Seven Dwarfs. Pictures in old nursery books were the models for the scenes. Because of the simplicity ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... Coila, with its one huge massive tower, and its dark frowning embattled walls. It could be seen from far and near, for even the loch itself was high above the level of the sea. I speak of it, be it observed, in the past tense, solely because I am writing of the past—of happy days for ever fled. The castle is still as beautiful—nay, even more so, for my aunt's good taste has completed ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... why the minute study of the words of Scripture carried on by all expositors, their search after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention to the {172} minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring of mood and tense and accent? The high scholars who speak lightly of the theory of literal inspiration of the Scriptures by their method of study and exegesis are they who put the strongest affirmation on the doctrine which they deny. Then we cannot forget ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... wish: 'would that I could see him in like circumstances, and would that at length the gods opened their eyes; then he would surely have to pay a heavy penalty for his impiety, for the death of my brother and for my sufferings.' The present subjunctive in the apodosis corresponds with the same tense in the protasis, and differs very little from the future indicative. See Zumpt, S 524, note. [107] 'Although life has been taken from thee before the age of maturity, and by a person who should have done it least of all.' Unde, the more general ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... a personal foundation. Irving's satire of both has always the old-time Grub Street flavor, or at least the reminiscent tone, which is, by the way, quite characteristic of nearly everything that he wrote about England. He was always a little in the past tense. Buckthorne's advice to his friend is, never to be eloquent to an author except in praise of his own works, or, what is nearly as acceptable, in disparagement of the work of his contemporaries. "If ever ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... floor, second, third, fourth. The everyday hum of the sewing machines was absent. The room seemed to be holding its breath. Josie fancied that the very garments on the worktables lifted themselves inquiringly from their supine position to see what it was that disturbed their Sabbath rest. Josie, a tense, wide-eyed, frightened little figure, stood in the centre of the vast room, listening to she knew not what. Then, relaxing, she gave a nervous little laugh and, reaching up, unpinned her hat. She threw it on a near-by table and disappeared into the ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... changing tones mingled with the blue wreaths that ascended from the sanctuary in a fragrant cloud, lingering over the congregation. The celebrant offered the bread and wine to Our Father in Heaven. And all this took time; the children were tired by their tense concentration; their prayers had all been said two and three times over; and they were now vacantly waiting and longing, looking at their clothes, at the stained-glass windows in the choir or St. Anne in her crimson cloak, or counting the ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... sight of Malcolm Sage, Mr. Llewellyn John's features relaxed from their drawn, tense expression. A look of relief flashed momentarily into Lord Beamdale's ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... altered her mouth, and the tight-curled upper lip quivered. Her heart, too, had begun its heavy, unsteady response in recognition of her lover's name; she turned partly away from Nina, burying her face in her brilliant hair; and beside her slim length, straight and tense, her arms lay, the small hands contracting till they had closed as tightly ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... daughter of a landowner and general, a young and pretty girl, dreaming day and night of being married, was sitting in her room, gazing with exhausted, half-closed eyes into the looking-glass. She was pale, tense, and as ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... tight, a. taut, tense; snug, close-fitting; (Colloq.) close, penurious, stingy, parsimonious; (Colloq.) stringent; (Slang) tipsy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... hinting you out of the way with the mellowness of a chimed horn; the bottle bird poured gallons of guggling essence of happiness from his silver jug. From the direction of camp, evidently jumped by the boys, a steinbuck loped gracefully, pausing every few minutes to look back, his dainty legs tense, his sensitive ears pointed toward the direction ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... a bench, peering over the shoulders of the crowd. Prince Ferdinand William Otto saw him, and bent forward. "There he is!" he said, in a tense tone. "There on the—" ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... (Vol. ii., pp. 376. 403.).—It is merely a conjecture, but may not the word Pandras be the second person singular in the future tense of a verb derived from the Latin pando, "to open?" I am not aware of the existence of such a word as pander in old French; but I believe that it was by no means an unusual practice among the writers of Chaucer's time to adapt Latin ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... the whole hall full of people held their breath in a tense uncertainty, because it was hard to believe in the broadcloth and fine linen in which he was clothed, but the brilliant hair, the ruffling crests, and the mocking, eery smile made them all certain by ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... across the room, her head thrown back, every nerve tense. Let the ignorant and stupid blame her if they chose. She stood absolved. Memory reminded her, moreover, of a great number of kind and generous things—private things—that she had done with her money. If men like Herbert French, or Alfred Boyson, denounced her, ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is time to end this farce, I think. So far as treachery, malice and truth are concerned you, not I," Marjorie swept the tense, listening group with an inclusive gesture, "are guilty. Some one of you deliberately wrote me a lying note in order to get me here. Now I am here, but your whole scheme has fallen flat because I am not afraid. You thought I would be. I will say again what I said ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... by the rather tense little circle gathered around her, as a compliment; exactly as, no doubt, Greville intended it to be taken. But her look flashed out beyond the confines of the circle and encountered a pair of big luminous ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... waters and ways of the air From thy forehead made bare, From the gleam of thy bow-bearing hand? Hast thou set not thy right hand again to the string, With the back-bowed horns bent sharp for a spring 1410 And the barbed shaft drawn, Till the shrill steel sing and the tense nerve ring That pierces the heart of the dark with dawn, O huntsman, O king, When the flame of thy face hath twilight in chase As a hound hath a blood-mottled fawn? He has glanced into golden the grey sea-strands, And the clouds are shot through with the ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... presently swerved a trifle from its first course, fluttered to and fro an instant, then neared a woman, who sat listlessly by herself, her arms resting upon those of her chair and her eyes, dark and sad, fastened upon the far horizon. There was a tense quiet in her attitude that seemed to cover something most ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory." Then a great awe brooded over the synagogue, and the vast forces of the universe seemed concentred about it, as if all creation was awaiting in tense silence for the terrible words of judgment. And then he felt some cool, sweet scent sprinkled on his forehead, and, as from the far ends of the world, he heard a voice that sounded like his father's asking him if he felt better. He opened his eyes and smiled faintly, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... spoken to her, and she admitted all that I need to know. Common decency, it seems to me, might have suggested to you that you leave my child out of the list of women you have degraded. Since it has not, I merely wish to say to you"—and Mr. Haguenin's face was very tense and white—"that the relationship between you and me is ended. The one hundred thousand dollars you have indorsed for me will be arranged for otherwise as soon as possible, and I hope you will return to me the stock of this paper that you hold as collateral. Another type of man, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... pagodas of ebony and cabinets of ivory; sculptured monsters, grinning and leering on chimney-pieces, in front of beautifully figured hand-screens; porcelain dinner-sets, gleaming behind the glass doors of mahogany buffets; large screens, in corners, covered with tense silk and embroidered with mandarins and dragons. These things were scattered all over the house, and they gave Eugenia a pretext for a complete domiciliary visit. She liked it, she enjoyed it; she thought it a very nice place. It had a mixture of the homely and the liberal, and ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... sat so tense in her chair that her weight did not relax to it. "You and me can't have no fusses, you know that, don't you? I give Phonzie the run of my floor, and he's the one has ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... his agony walked to the window, his updrawn shoulders tense, like those of a man standing by an open grave. He stood there for a moment, Kitty silently watching him, until, with a deep sigh, he ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... voice tense with excitement. "Who said artist? Who called her that?" He glared fiercely about. "Let us have an end to this blatant misuse of fine old words. To say of one that he is an artist is to touch ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... stood in the gateway leaning on his rifle, his coonskin cap thrust back on his brown hair, his bright, steady gray eyes concentrated as he listened. His tall, lithe figure in his buckskin hunting shirt and leggings, the habitual garb of the frontiersmen, grew tense and gave an intimation of gathering all its forces for the defensive as he noted how the aspect of the station differed from its wonted guise. Every house of the assemblage of little log cabins stood open; here and there in the misty air, for there had been a swift, short spring shower, fires could ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... easily down at the tense ring of faces. "Gentlemen, beyond this door lies the sprawling giant of the Southwest—enough land to absorb Earth's overflow like that!" He snapped his fingers. "I speak, gentlemen, ...
— Of Time and Texas • William F. Nolan
... to be a groom as well as a bride, though I see I have said nothing concerning him. Never mind, you shall see him when you come. Dear Ester, there isn't a word of tense in this letter, I know; but I haven't time to put ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... Mr. Barker and of the red cab-driver, in the past tense. Alas! Mr. Barker has again become an absentee; and the class of men to which they both belonged is fast disappearing. Improvement has peered beneath the aprons of our cabs, and penetrated to the very innermost recesses ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... bell-wort, he helped her disentangle the aromatic string from her falling braids,—for I kept apart,—he breathed the penetrating incense of each separate amulet, and I saw that from that hour, when every atom of his sensation was tense and vibrating, she would be associated with the loathed amber in his undefined consciousness, would be surrounded with an atmosphere of its perfume, that Lu was truly sealed from him in it, sealed into herself. Then again, saying no word, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... moonlight, and Knight, after remaining upon the churchyard stile a few minutes longer, turned back again towards the building. His usual course was now to light a cigar or pipe, and indulge in a quiet meditation. But to-night his mind was too tense to bethink itself of such a solace. He merely walked round to the site of the fallen tower, and sat himself down upon some of the large stones which had composed it until this day, when the chain of circumstance originated by Stephen Smith, while ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... usually only two, took position on the little terreplein below the shack, and began a slow movement, taking very short, formal, staccato steps in a circle against the sun. Keeping back to back and side to side, they maintained the whole body in a tense, rigid posture with the chest out, head up and thrown back, abdomen drawn in, right hand straight out, the left also, holding a shield, eyes glazed and fixed, knees bent forward. Between the steps, the dancers would stand in this strained, tense position, then move forward ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... [A tense pause; all stare at Henry. He never takes his eyes from Oceana. Slowly, like one hypnotized, he draws away from his wife's embrace, and moves towards Oceana. He seizes her hand. All ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... among the tools on the table and, with a movement that was not unlike the guarding action of a huge mastiff, rose to his feet. His face was a picture of animal rage; his teeth were bared, his eyes gleamed, his every muscle was tense. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... so human to him, the hawthorn and broom on the Severn shores are so fragrant with associations, he cannot help but compose under a kind of imaginative wizardry of exultation, even when the immediate subject is grim or grotesque. In many of these brief, tense poems the reader confronts a mask, as it were, with appalling and distorted lineaments; but behind it the poet smiles, perhaps sardonically, but smiles nevertheless. In the real countenance there are no tears or grievances, but a quizzical, humorous expression ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... may be said, that [Greek: en] is in the former part of the sentence, and therefore might have been repeated in the latter part, which is the converse of it, though it might not be exactly the proper tense. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... heaven. The night did not seem different from other nights. The skies were as serene and the stars burned as calm as in all the past. The shepherds were as unconscious of any coming wonder as the sleeping sheep that lay like drifted snow on the ridges. Yet the heavens were strained tense with expectation and were on the point of being shattered into song. Flocks of angels were flying downward from the stars, and as their white wings struck earth's atmosphere they kindled it into radiance ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... awake when the midnight accommodation whistled its impending arrival from the north. She listened, tense, as the train came to a stop in the town. A brief halt, then it sounded its underway, the pistons accelerated their chugging beat and it passed out ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... white, tense face the elder boy leveled his revolver. He pulled the trigger and, before the sharp report that followed had died away, the monstrous, snake was threshing its ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... whispered, "nerve yourself. I'm afraid it's going to be worse than I feared. It seems that there were actually six of them—only one is not quite finished. The competition was very tense—and they all arrived in my absence. Old man, hold me! I'm about ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... A tense tale, such as we expect of George Manville Fenn. A group of English people are in the Swiss Alps. But it is not just the beauties of the scenery they are after, but crystals which may sometimes be found ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... close upon the British sentries, with every nerve strained tense for fight or flight; anon we would be making wide detours through bog and fen, or beneath the black network of wet branches with the rain-soaked leaf beds under foot to make the horses' treadings as noiseless as ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Anarchist and a grumbler: he has no such word as Fatherland, and the idea which he supposes corresponds to it is nothing but the swing of a roaring chorus to a patriotic song. Also he is a muddler and a slacker, because tense and continuous work means thought; and he is lazy and fat in the head. But as long as he is himself, and grumbles, it does not matter. Given a furious Opposition screaming for the disgrace of tyrannical ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the up-spouting column of flames the airship winged her way. Tense and alert, Tom sat at the wheel guiding his craft with her load of fire-defying chemicals. Behind him were Ned, Mr. Damon and Mr. Baxter, ready to drop the grenades at ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... than Satan? Yehudas, what is that but Jews? And then homox, how very near to the Latin homo! I think, too, that I have even got a notion of some of the grammatical forms of the language. That termination of en, as in deluden, salubren, seems to me the sign of the present tense of the plural form of the verb. That other termination of tar, as in ebuntar, carantar, I suppose to be the sign of the infinitive. Depend upon it that this language is one of absolute regularity, undeformed by the results of human folly and sorrow, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... immediately hooked her right arm behind her in her left hand—an attitude absolutely necessary to the situation—and replied: 'One is indicative mood, present tense, third person singular, verb active to say. Other is indicative mood, present tense, third person ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... The tense feline growl of the tiger grew more distinct. The Prince's hand sought the jewelled handle of his kris. There was a swift rush in the darkness, a crashing among the rubber-vines, a short, quick snarl, and then all ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... in the farm, in all that landscape the only living thing at the moment, except for the animals. A tense energy of will seemed to possess her. She was defending herself—defending Ellesborough—and their joint lives. How was she going to do it? She didn't know. But the passion in her blood would give ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Pyecroft's arm fly up; heard at the same moment the severing of the tense rope, the working of the wheel, Moorshed's voice down the tube saying, "Astern a little, please, Mr. Hinchcliffe!" and Pyecroft's cry, "Trawler with her gear down! Look out for our propeller, Sir, or we'll be wrapped up ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... toward him and delivered his oration. At its conclusion he turned his livid face toward where, above him, Patsy was swaggering and heaving his shoulders in a consummate display of bravery and readiness. The Cuban, in his clear, tense tones, spoke one word. It was the bitter insult. It seemed fairly to spin from his lips and crackle in the ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... the back is the next region treated. The patient lies prone, folding the arms under the head; a firm pillow is put under the epigastric region, so as to the better relax the back muscles, which are too tense when a person lies flat. Beginning from the occiput, both hands stroke firmly and rapidly downward and outward to the spines of the scapulae, at first lightly, then with increasing force. Then the whole back is vigorously ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... For long tense minutes Blake forced himself to remain rigidly motionless while Zehru labored over Mapes. Then finally the Xollarian turned his attention briefly back to Blake, and thrust two tentacles in to grip his body. No ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... trouble, a friend sleeping in the Gethsemane of our mortal anguish, does not always find us armed with divine patience. We loved England; we respected, revered her; we were bound to her by ties of blood and race. Alas! must all these declarations be written in the past tense? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various |
